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Indesign to epub image issue

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    • #69862
      Mark Blondin
      Member

      I have a long document/book (192 pgs) in which there are several charts, tables, etc.

      btw… I am using Indesign 5.5

      I converted them to jpg and then set those into the articles panel. When I export to epub they don’t “connect” they end up at the end of the document.

      I have tried every each way to anchor them to no avail. The text flow currently is set around those jpg images. Which is why I put them in the articles panel.

      Uncle.

      I have tried everything I can think of to get these to export in sequence.

      Any ideas?

      Mark

    • #69872
      Mark Blondin
      Member

      Just a quick follow-up to my post above with more detail. The images in question are full-page jpg images.

      These two full-page jpg images are in the Articles Panel.

      They do not export to the epub file. More accurately they don’t export on pages 69-70 where they belong but rather at the end of the document.

      I have tried several unorthodox ways to anchor the images on those pages with no success (they don’t export where they should.)

      For the most part I have kept those two pages out of the text flow but have tried including them as well.

      Perhaps the answer is treating them as objects?

    • #69873
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      If the images are showing up in the Articles panel, then I assume they’re not anchored in the text story. If they’re in the Articles panel, they will show up between two stories (or at the beginning or end of the document). If you want them in the middle of a story, you need to anchor the images/objects in the story. (That is, turn them into anchored objects.)

    • #69876
      Mark Blondin
      Member

      The images are showing up in the articles panel because I put them there hoping they would export in that sequence. You are right, they are not anchored which we are desperate to do…

      Note: we originally took the client’s Word file and then laid it out in Indesign for POD. That turned out great. There are several tables, charts, and images in this document most of which we are converting to jpg.

      We do have (12) 4″ square images two in each chapter that we anchored in-line that work perfectly. It is the full-page images that are a challenge. Also currently those two pages are out of the text flow.

      I now will focus on anchoring the full-page images but that strategy seems to need a work-around since a blank page doesn’t have text to anchor it to. We have tried adding a small text frame with a paragraph break without success and a couple other similar stunts.

      The text was imported as one long document. Right now the text flows around these two particular full-page articles. What you said above makes sense, they are setting there alone and not included in the text flow. Although up until now I thought by including them in the Articles Panel that would force the appearance in the epub at that point. Okay, scratch that thought.

      There is something peculiar going on that I can’t see or don’t understand. For this morning’s challenge I tried to re-flow the text in and out of the two frames with the full page images. That opened a wild can of worms of text flowing over the images. So then I took the images out, let the text flow “naturally” and went back and tried to anchor the two full-page images (shift+slide “blue box”) next to the paragraph break we want to anchor it to. That caused the text to stop flowing after the two images (the next 50 pages). I am still shaking my head in disbelief.

      Any suggestion(s) would be greatly appreciated.

      btw… I took Nigel French’s advice and made the title page, copyright and dedication page into full-page images. I placed those in the Articles Panel (they are not anchored)and they show up correctly in the epub file. Those first three pages are also in the text flow which keeps me thinking that is key. But why it works on those first three pages and not the two full-page images mid-way through the text flow that are not anchored (even though I placed them in the Articles Panel)confuses me.

      I can’t anchor as part of the document and I can’t anchor them in the text flow. Totally screwed.

    • #69877
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      Are you trying to make a single document look right for print (actually laying out the page the way you want it to look) and also for epub? That is often really tricky. It’s often better to just have one version of a document which is for epub and it doesn’t really matter how it appears in InDesign.

      For example you could put the full-page graphics on the same page as where you want them anchored in the text, but just kind of push them off in the margins or onto the pasteboard. Then anchor them (drag the little blue box into position in the text), then export.

      Remember: How the document appears in InDesign has nothing to do with how it will appear in epub. So putting the images on their own page in InDesign is not necessary.

    • #69878
      Mark Blondin
      Member

      Hi,
      I really appreciate you taking the time. This is driving me a bit mad…

      To clarify, the print book is done. We completed it and sent it to the printer.

      Now we are taking that Indesign file and getting it ready for an ebook. btw… the other part of “we” is my wife.

      I assume that the two images in question need to anchored by some means.

      As mentioned above, we have not been successful doing that and are befuddled. We have anchored several other images (inline) that export well so we understand the steps.

      “So then I took the images out, let the text flow “naturally” and went back and tried to anchor the two full-page images (shift+slide “blue box”) next to the paragraph break we want to anchor it to. That caused the text to stop flowing after the two images (the next 50 pages). I am still shaking my head in disbelief.”

      I will move forward assuming that we need to anchor these much larger images into the text flow (inline) in a similar fashion. We have tried to do that for the better part of two days.

      If only I knew why, when I did that, the text stopped flowing after the image.

      Is there a way to let the text flow around these two images (which it currently does) but somehow “anchor” or “lock” them in place so they show up in the epub?

      Mark Blondin

    • #69879
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      Why are you shift-dragging the blue box instead of just dragging the blue box? Shift-dragging makes them “inline” objects. Just dragging them makes them “anchored” objects.

      Try doing this with a small graphic and you’ll immediately see the difference.

      My guess is that when you made them inline objects, the graphics were too large to fit into the frame, so they became overset (along with all the text after them). That doesn’t happen with anchored objects; just inline.

    • #69880
      Mark Blondin
      Member

      Thank you for listening and pointing in the right direction.

      I cannot say why but this time both images anchored inline. We did remove a page break before ???

      Wow. Time to move forward…

      Mark

    • #69976

      Another option would’ve been to split the text flow into two. One text flow stops right before the 2 full-page images. Then the second one starts after the second image, picking up where the first one left off.

      As you’ve learned, if images aren’t anchored in the text flow, InDesign exports them after the full story (which begin in the frame/s preceding them in the document) has been exported.

      AM

    • #69982
      Mark Blondin
      Member

      We have watched Lynda.com tutorials exhaustively. We could not have gotten this far without them. Still it is a matter of slugging it out. It would have been nice to start with a less complicated book e.g. w/o several tables, charts, images.

      We are 90% complete, the exported epub looks almost perfect… we need to read/watch about separating the start of new chapters so there is a break, but that is minor. But we caught another glitch by adding an “Internal TOC” after the first three images (title, CR, Dedication).

      In case you feel really generous, this is the second working day to solve this “glitch” so tension is running high.

      We originally flowed the text from the title page(later converted to an image)throughout the book. Yesterday we created a new page (pg 4) after the first three images. Then we created an “Internal” TOC and started linking it to the Chapter Headings. All good. But not so fast.

      The last 24 hours has seen us trying to include the Internal TOC page into the text flow. It’s been a nightmare. Nothing seems to work. It’s like the page is not recognized. When we re-flow (I use that term in the loosest sense) the text, our pg 5 (Acknowledgments) flows on top of the TOC. We put a frame break on the TOC page but that didn’t faze it. The TOC page seems irrelevant (not sure of the right word there).

      note: the Acknowledgments page is where text for the book actually starts to flow now because, again, the 1st 3pgs are now images.

      The working theory is that page 4 was not in the original flow of text which theoretically and physically/visually starts on the title image, then CR, then dedication. Is there a way to include page 4 in the existing flow of text?

      Confused,

      Mark and Betsy Blondin

    • #70028

      The TOC has to be in its own story, contained in its own frame. It can’t be part of the book’s “main flow” of text.

      So the pages coming before the TOC have to also be their “own story” … that is, their text frame’s Out Port needs to be empty, no arrow showing there. That way, InDesign looks at the first page/spread, exports the content. No story is threaded to a page that comes after the TOC, so it goes to page 2. Exports. Page 3. Exports. Gets to your TOC page. Exports that story. Gets to the next page … maybe it’s Chapter 1. And here it’s the first frame in a threaded story that spans many pages. So it exports the entire story. Then it goes to page 6 … if the only thing there is the threaded story, which it already exported, it goes to page 7, and so on.

      I know I talked about this in my video on Layout Order Export in my InDesign > EPUB vids on lynda. And David has some very good videos in his InDesign Essentials lessons on how to work with threaded stories.

      hope that helps!
      AM

    • #70030
      Mark Blondin
      Member

      Thanks! We have only four seemingly minor problems to solve before we are finished. Make that three.

      We must have missed the video (doesn’t seem possible) that discusses the fact the internal TOC can’t be in the text flow when exporting to epub. It gets a bit confusing because David talks mainly about print and you have a tutorial devoted to epub.

      I honestly can’t remember either indicating that the internal TOC has to its own story. I’m guessing my memory is faulty.

      Frustrating stuff happens in Indesign. We have a chapter heading (#3 of only 6) that has the same paragraph style as every other chapter heading. But it consistently won’t export in that style. We have tried a slew of please work to no avail.

      We have a second book, all text. At the end of the project the client asked for narrower margins. Several videos later in which it is made to look so simple, some pages change and others don’t, mostly they don’t. They are all master pages.

      I would like to believe those type of things are pilot error because that would allow me to keep the faith that with enough experience/understanding, crazy shit would stop happening.

      Mark

    • #14324286
      Justine Wenman
      Participant

      I have had similar problems with placing full-page images into Indesign. Here is what I came up with.
      I create a paragraph style and name it “invisible.” The type is very small, 6pt, centered on the page, and I make it magenta so it shows up on the page. Using this invisible style I type the description that I want to appear in the TOC but not on the page with the image, such as “Title Page,” or “Map of Spain.” When I create the TOC, I add the paragraph style ïnvisible” to the other styles I want the TOC to display, such as chapterNumber. Then I place the image on the page under the “invisible” paragraph style and anchor the image to the “ïnvisible” text, with äbove-line anchoring, centered, with a negative Y axis setting. (The only setting I can get to work.)
      Then I export to epub, open the file in Sigil, add this to the css for the invisible paragraph style: visibility:hidden;. This makes the text disappear, but the words that I type using the invisible style still show up in the table of contents.
      I am new to everything epub and have spent hours trying different things, so I was very happy to come up with this workaround. Is there another way to get an image to show up where you want it without anchoring it to text, even if you don’t want the text to appear? I would use a similar paragraph style even if I didn’t want it to be referenced in the toc.

    • #14333624

      I show you in the YouTube video link below how to anchor an image into the text in Indesign CC so it stays with the text when doing an EPUB export. This method forces the picture to stay where you want it in the text even though the image floats around on the Indesign layout. This will not affect where the picture appears in a PDF export but only fixes the position in an EPUB export in Indesign CC.

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